Remakes, Retreads, Repeats (Hugo Cinema 1993)

This blog post is the thirty-sixth in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.

The 51st World Science Fiction Convention had a more robust media presence than many of its predecessors had.

Special effects legend Stan Winston showed up to promote the upcoming adaptation of Interview With The Vampire. Rockne S. Obannon was on hand to show clips from his new series Seaquest DSV. There were presentations from that autumn’s hot new Superman TV show Lois and Clark. Publicists shared sizzle reels for several of that autumn’s SFF movies like The Shadow, Robocop 3, and Demolition Man.

Given the amount of money spent promoting their wares at the World Science Fiction Convention, it seemed like Hollywood was starting to take science fiction fandom seriously. But most of the films shown at the convention, and many of those on the shortlist in 1993 did not provide much evidence that they took science fiction itself very seriously.

An important exception to this was Babylon 5. The pilot had aired the previous February, and was already hotly discussed in fanzines. Series creator J. Michael Straczynski flew up to San Francisco in person to give fans a preview of the upcoming first season of the show. It garnered rave reviews from fans in attendance, many of whom felt that what was seen at Worldcon looked even better than what had

Alien 3 is pretty bad, but gave us one memorable
image. (Via IMDB)

previously aired. MT Void editor Mark Leeper enthusiastically wrote “I would trade any two episodes of Star Trek for one episode of Babylon 5.”

But Babylon 5 wouldn’t be on the ballot that year, and the shortlist offered a mostly forgettable set of movies that are re-treads of more artistically successful fare.

At a panel discussing the state of science fiction cinema at the Worldcon, attendees griped about the “poor calibre” of the Best Dramatic Presentation shortlist that year. In the end, two of the five finalists (Alien 3 and Batman Returns) were ranked below “no award” — something that had not happened in more than a decade.

Much (and deservedly) maligned, Alien 3 seems like an unusual inclusion on the Hugo Award ballot. “Alien 3 will alienate the hardcore fans of Alien and Aliens,” Hollywood Reporter reviewer Duane Byrge predicted with some accuracy. “It is perhaps the most sterile and mechanical science fiction film in history.” Assigned to first-time director David Fincher, the movie finds Ellen Ripley stranded on an all-male prison planet. Although that set-up might provide an interesting setting for further encounters with the titular xenomorphs, it ends up as mostly a shoddy production that looks and feels cheap. Brian Glover and Charles Dance provide significant charisma, but their contributions feel hollow given the fact that fan-favourite characters Bishop and Newt from the previous movie are killed offscreen before the movie begins.

Even the director of Alien 3 isn’t a fan of the film. "No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me," Fincher later wrote.

The sequel to Tim Burton’s genre-defnining first Batman movie, Batman Returns is one of the most idiosyncratic and strange mainstream superhero films. Mostly ignoring its own title character, the movie meanders between Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) seeking revenge, the Penguin (Danny DeVito) running for mayor, Max Schreck (Christopher Walken) being a generically evil big businessman. It’s interesting to note that Burton deliberately abandoned the Oscar-winning sets from the first movie that had been

Batman Returns asks viewers to accept the idea that
a hideous charlatan with an unnatural skin tone and
improbable hair could be elected to executive office
 thanks to a campaign of lies and demagoguery.
Thankfully that could never happen
in the real-world. (Image via Batman.wiki)

designed by Anton Furst, choosing instead to hire Bo Welch with whom he’d worked on Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands. Welch’s more gothic and surreal sets in the sequel leave the world more unmoored from realistic worldbuilding, which we would suggest is reflected in the storytelling. Consequently Burton’s penchant for artifice and whimsy is at its height, and his ability to tell a story is at its nadir. The result is a somewhat perplexing mess of a movie filled with moments of genius that don’t add up to a coherent whole. It was, however, the highest grossing movie of the year, so it’s easy to understand why it’s on the Hugo ballot.

Despite being a bit of a hot mess, Francis Ford Coppola’s lush, overstuffed, rococo remake of Bram Stoker’s Dracula deserved its spot on the Hugo Award shortlist. “The film lifts from Klimt, Kupka and Beardsley for symbolist chic, Eisenstein and Kurosawa for the sabre-rattling historical prologue,” Jonathan Romney wrote in The New Statesman. “You can tell Coppola had fun.” It’s overly long, has too many characters, but is also visually compelling and features some first-rate performances. Notably, Winona Rider’s portrayal of Mina Harker gives the character more depth than most cinematic adaptations of Dracula.

The Disney Renaissance was in full swing when the musical animation interpration of Aladdin hit cinemas in November of 1992. The movie was the first the studio had released to feature non-European animated protagonists — though Aladdin was played by the very white Scott Weinger, while Jasmine was played by the even whiter Linda Larkin. The also pale-skinned Robin Williams, who was at the height of his fame, famously improvised his role as the genie of the lamp. By the time it was released, the film already had the first Disney song ever to top the Billboard Hot 100 (A Whole New World, sung by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle). The classic fairy tale about a young man who is granted three wishes by a magic lamp is reinterpreted for a ’90s audience with a wise-cracking Djinn, some pretty kicking songs, and awkwardly

Dracula's demented and obsequious minion Renfield
has rarely been depicted as more vile and disgusting
than he was in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 adaptation.
(Image via New York Daily News) 

stereotyped racial skin tones (all the protagonists have lighter skin than the villains or the guards…). Disney was a studio in transition, increasingly leaning on computer animation, but the line-drawing is not as smooth as some previous movies from the studio. Our viewing group was split on Aladdin, with most declaring it to be one of their all-time favourite animated movies, but others bristling at the tonal mismatch between Robin Williams’ manic performance and the more straight-laced tone chosen for the rest of the movie. Even those who loved it, however, suggested Aladdin doesn’t feel like a Hugo Award type of movie.

There are some notable omissions from the shortlist. Alexandr Petrov’s Dream of a Ridiculous Man (adapted from the short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky) is a visually inventive philosophical fantasy that might have warranted attention. Peter Mak Tai-Kit’s The Wicked City played on the liminal political status of Hong Kong in the 1990s, and did so with style (and a lot of neon lights). And Bill Kroyer’s eco-fable Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest holds up better than you’d expect.

But in 1992, the best screen speculative fiction was happening on television. After an uneven second season, Star Trek: The Next Generation was firing on all cylinders. It seems like just about every other week in 1992, there had been a stand-out episode of the iconic space exploration series: Hero Worship, Conundrum, The Outcast, Cause and Effect, I, Borg, and Chain of Command all come to mind.

Hugo voters nominated only one episode though: The Inner Light. In the episode, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) has an encounter with an ancient alien space probe that forces him to experience the life of a member of a long-extinct species. It’s a stand-alone episode with a solid central arc, and offers the classically-trained Stewart an opportunity to flex his dramatic chops. From the perspective of those who do not have a significant investment in the characters or the series, it’s one of the most approachable episodes of the season, though the hard-core Next Generation fans in our group felt there were stronger stories from this season of television. Hugo administrators were surprised — and pleased — to discover that the episode’s director Peter Lauritsen flew out to San Francisco to accept the award at the Hugo ceremony.

Despite a weaker shortlist in 1992, the Hugo Award went to a deserving winner, especially if you count The Inner Light as representative of one of the greatest science fiction television series of all time.